Apex

by jkatejohnston

Teresa: “If we ever have another baby, I’m going to name it Apex.” As in Apex predator, which humans are, Enzo likes to point out. I told Enzo that Teresa almost named him Ace. But I put my foot down. I believe Cadillac and Nicorette were also on her short list. And all this reminds me that when we were in Tahoe Teresa and Enzo had a whole discussion about naming babies after salmon. Coho for a boy. Or just King. And for a girl, Kokanee.

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Enzo: “I feel like twenty percent of everything is gross. Why is it?”

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Enzo: “If I catch a salmon, can we put it in the newspaper?”

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Teresa and Enzo did a puzzle of the United States and then I overheard Teresa going over the map showing him where all the football teams are from, pointing out how New York has three teams and so does California and filling in the whole map in between. Enzo had pointed out earlier that he colored on some of the states, but it was for a reason: to show where dinosaur fossils had been found.

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Enzo at the park after drinking water, “Now ahm powered up.”

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Enzo in the car on the way to dodge ball, “Oh Fudge! I said Fudge. Which makes no logical sense.” I asked him where he learned that expression, and he said from a kid at Southside Park. I’m fine with fudge. What’s not to like?

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Teresa and I have both been noticing how Enzo’s getting interested in words and numbers. Like, “Salmon has an M in it, right?” Or poring over his dinosaur books and then announcing that T Rex is X number of feet longer than Velociraptor, and so on.

The Waldorf way is to make everything into a story. When I heard about that I wondered, how do you do that with math? But with Enzo and his un-Waldorfian obsession with competition, it’s easy: who is the biggest, the tallest, the heaviest, the fastest? Who is the Apex Predator? The drama of domination is all in numbers.